Searching for something good to read this holiday season? We decided to reach out to the community – our readers, our writers, artists that we’ve covered over the years and people who work at galleries – for suggestions. We’ve gathered an eclectic list of titles: Some hot off the press and some old favourites, some top sellers and some that will be harder to find, whether in Canada or further afield. Naughty or nice, you’re welcome to check out this list. If you have other suggestions, please add them in the comments section at the end of the story, so this collective gift can keep on giving.
And so, without further ado …
Reader Shayla Perreault, a Vancouver artist who works at the Contemporary Art Gallery, was the first to send in her suggestions. She reads a lot and says her favourite is a 2006 book, The Yellow House, by British art critic Martin Gayford. Perreault says his account of the nine weeks Vincent Van Gogh and Gauguin spent as roommates in Arles in 1888 is a page-turner. “It’s easy to get wrapped up in Vincent’s dreams and hope they turn out, at least for a time,” she says. “Gayford makes a topic we may think we know about feel fresh and exciting.”
In Winnipeg, artist and writer Cliff Eyland recommends After Kathy Acker by Chris Kraus. This 2017 biography of Acker, an American writer, performance artist and all-round bohemian, was based on archival research and conversations with Acker’s friends two decades after her death. “Fascinating stuff,” says Eyland. “I’m studying it, really.”
Camille Robertson, from Edmonton’s Peter Robertson Gallery, suggests The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild, a “brilliant satire” about the art world. Robertson found it hard to put down the book, published in Britain in 2015. “The appreciation of European history and the turmoil of relationships is the equation for an art dealers’ perfect read,” she says.
Winnipegger Stacey Abramson says she’s excited about Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada, edited by Montreal writer Heather Davis and co-published this year by McGill-Queen’s University Press and Winnipeg’s Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art. Abramson says she has relied on the non-profit group during her career as an educator, artist and writer. “I’m happy to say that now I can add creating a beautifully written and comprehensive publication of contemporary Canadian feminist art (the first of its kind in Canada!) to the list. It’s an engaging collection of writings from some stellar curators, artists and critics.”
A feminist text is also recommended by Calgary's Katherine Ylitalo: The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Published by Penguin Books in 1998, it's still timely in this #MeToo era. “One of the last chapter headings is: Today Women Are Equal, Right?” says Ylitalo, an independent curator, writer and art consultant. “Twenty years after publication, it’s still edgy. I like to keep this book at hand, especially when young people want to know more about feminism.”
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Nicole Bauberger, a Yukon artist who paints highway scenes during her road trips across Canada, recommends The Arrival by Shaun Tan. A picture story published in 2007 by American publisher Arthur A. Levine, it draws people into the immigrant experience by asking them to decode images without written cues. “When I first found it, I bought as many copies as I could afford and gave them to people as Christmas presents,” says Bauberger.
Edmonton artist Agnieszka Matjeko, a frequent contributor to Galleries West, suggests Seven Days In The Art World, a 2009 ethnography by Canadian-born Sarah Thornton. Published by W.W. Norton, a New York publishing house, it became an international hit. "It is not an inspiring book," says Matejko. “Quite the opposite. It makes you want to take up accounting or something simple and practical. However, it is one of those books you pick up and read in a few breaths. The author opens our eyes to the inner workings of the subculture that is the art world, the star-making machinery behind success.” Matejko also recommends The Writing on the Wall: The Work of Joane Cardinal-Schubert, published in conjunction with a show this year at the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary. “It’s a wonderful book about an iconic artist,” says Matejko. “To my delight there was no art-speak and it gave an insightful and poignant account of this artist’s life, activism, spirituality and art.”
Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, a former director of the Richmond Art Gallery, suggests Abstract City, a 2012 book by Christoph Niemann. Begun as a visual blog for the New York Times, it combines his observations about the simple things we encounter in daily life with ingenuous drawings and illustrations. “It’s funny, imaginative and creative, and just the book I need to put a smile on my face in these dark times,” says Lafo, who recently relocated to Portland, Oregon, as an independent curator and writer.
At dc3 Art Projects in Edmonton, which just opened its own bookstore, director Michelle Schultz recommends The Miraculous by Raphael Rubinstein. “It’s a little book I revisit often,” she says. “Published by non-profit Brooklyn-based press Paper Monument, it recounts fascinating, absurd and stranger-than-fiction incidents from the contemporary art world.”
Susan Cohn, a Winnipeg reader, wrote in with a couple suggestions. Among them was Anna Moszynska’s Sculpture Now, published in 2013 by British publishing house Thames & Hudson. “An excellent account of sculpture created during the upheavals of the 1980s, rising technology in the 1990s, to current, often radical, times,” says Cohn. “Moszynska, a renowned London art historian and professor, eloquently unfolds the story of contemporary sculpture’s dramatic transformation.”
Vancouver photographer Mark Mushet recommends Clayton Cotterell’s Arrangements, a small-run 2014 book by Ampersand Editions out of Portland. “This is a gorgeous collection of photographs in the found still life vein,” says Mushet. “I love his eye and the diversity of subjects, from towels to brambles to rock faces to electrical cords. It’s really the kind of unfiltered stuff-of-life photography that usually evades print reproduction in the Instagram era. I’m awash in images 24/7 and can’t even begin to think of how I’d present my own work. This book provides an example that encourages even the most jaded photographer to see everything afresh.”
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If you’re interested in craft, artist Amy Gogarty, a former instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design, suggests Made in Canada: Craft and Design in the Sixties, edited by Alan C. Elder and published in 2005 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. “We are a bit too used to thinking everything interesting comes from outside Canada,” says Gogarty, now based in Vancouver. “So it’s lovely to read about objects designed right here.”
Vancouver artist Bettina Matzkuhn, whose work often involves mapping, has been reading Explorers’ Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery & Adventure by Huw Lewis-Jones and Kari Herbert. It includes fascinating landscape sketches, cryptic notes and natural history drawings, amongst other things. “There is a remarkable range in how explorers (many of whom are women) have documented their voyages,” says Matzkuhn.
Former Saskatchewan arts writer Bart Gazzola has a weighty suggestion – and one he couldn’t leave behind when he downsized for his recent move to Ontario – Revolution: A Reader. This 1,200-page book, compiled and annotated by Lisa Robertson and Matthew Stadler, offers a variety of authors grouped around themes like childhood, education and death. As the book’s blurb explains, they follow "the specific revolutions we have experienced in our conversations with one another, in our friendships and communities, and with the writers we love.” Adds Gazzola: “It’s a book that offers you a taste of individuals you may be familiar with … and the tools to seek out more from those thinkers and activists. As well, the online aspect of the book allows for further dialogues. It is, in many ways, a number of books in one, and a book that you can encounter in various ways, choosing whom and what you focus upon. A dense, but rich, collection.”
Vancouver arts writer Beverly Cramp, who often contributes to Galleries West, suggests Traces of Words: Art and Calligraphy from Asia, edited by Fuyubi Nakamura, a professor of Asian Studies at UBC. The book, which accompanied a recent exhibition of the same name at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology, introduced Cramp to Afghan artist Shamsia Hassani. “Her work is often referred to as graffiti art, but it transcends the medium with its playful but deadly serious approach to fighting for women’s rights and healing the wounds of war,” says Cramp. “The gravitas of the work hits home when one realizes the danger Hassani puts herself in to do her street work.”
Other recommendations include:
- Anthony Caro: Drawing in Space by Mary Reid
- My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
- This is Life by Dan Rhodes
- Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna J. Haraway
- Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else by David Balzer
- Ways of Curating by Hans Ulrich Obrist
- Abstract Painting in Canada by Roald Nasgaard
- Repeating Lenin by Slavoj Žižek
Remember to add your suggestions in the comments section!
